Apart from a brief spell, at the end of my teenage years and a shift into my early twenties, I have always been an avid reader. But the last...

Merry Christmas one and all. Hope father christmas brings you the books you have asked for and that 2013 is going to be a positive year. ...

This was written for a cycling short story competition. Sadly pipped at the post but the theme was The Bike and it had to be done in no more...

I have been doing a bit of creative writing recently when the urge hits. I'm not a vain person - far from it, I have self esteem issues ...

I've not really been blogging much since milo was born. But spam comments keep coming and beeping in the inbox. The best thing seems to ...

Young adult fiction has to do a couple of things to work well. It needs to grab you from the off and it needs to maintain a pace until the...

Occassionally you will see children interviewed for some lifestyle programme and they are asked what their favourite subject is. When aske...

One of the numerous attractions of reading is the way that a book can transport you to a different world and give you a mental break from ...

What holds most crime books together is the personality of the detective leading the hunt for the killer. Think Morse, Holmes or Maigret ...

before I manage to finish something new i'm going to try to get round to posting some of the reviews of books i finished a while ago but...

apologies for the absence but having another child has rather changed my reading routine. In some ways it's not a lack of sleep but just...

This is late in the day but the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (IFFP) was awarded to Blooms of Darkness, which I reviewed recently. Per...

Having read some Peter Ackroyd before the technique of overlapping history in different parts of London is not something unfamiliar. Bu...

This starts with a biblical come fairy story and the magical imagery of angels, demons and the supernatural stay throughout. Set in someti...

You get to the end of this book and its not until you read the bits and pieces that are usually things you skip that you realise the sheer...